Dale of Thoughts. We'd appreciate you not making copies of this program off the air without express permission from the Alan Watts Institute. And we'll be giving you an address at the end of today's talk that you can write to for more information or for a cassette copy of today's talk. Now here's Alan Watts with Part One from Dale of Thoughts. The subject of this seminar is Dale of Thoughts. And following up a theme that somebody once suggested by saying that thought is a means of concealing truth. Despite the fact that it's an extraordinarily useful faculty, but in quite recent weeks we've had an astounding example of the way mankind can be bamboozled by thought.

[01:02]

There was a crisis about gold and the confusion of money in any form whatsoever with wealth is one of the major problems from which civilization is suffering. Because way back in our development, when we first began to use symbols to represent the events of the physical world, we found this such an ingenious device that we became completely fascinated with it. And in ever so many different dimensions of life, we are living in a state of total confusion between symbol and reality. And the real reason why, in our world today where there is no technical reason whatsoever why there should be any poverty at all, the reason it still exists is people keep asking the question, where's the money going to come from?

[02:17]

Not realizing that money doesn't come from anywhere. It never did. Except if you thought it was gold. And then, of course, if to increase the supply of gold and use that to finance all the world's commerce, prosperity would depend not upon finding new processes for growing food in vast quantities, or getting nutrition out of the ocean, or getting water from atomic energy. No, it depends on discovering a new goldmine. And you can see what a nonsensical state of affairs that is. Because when gold is used for money, it becomes, in fact, useless. Gold is very useful metal for filling teak, making jewelry, and maybe covering the dome of the Capitol in Washington. But the moment it is locked up in vaults, in the form of ingots, it becomes completely useless.

[03:22]

It becomes a false security, something that people criticize, like an idol, like a belief in some kind of big daddy old god, whispers, who lives above the clouds. And all that kind of thing diverts our attention from reality. We go through all sorts of weird rituals, and get in the symbols. In other words, get in the way of practical life. So, if you remember the Great Depression, I expect a number of you here looking around are old enough to remember the Great Depression. When one day, everybody was doing business, and things were going along pretty well. And the next day, there were bread lines. And it was like someone came to work, and they said to him, Sorry chum, but you can't build today. No building can go on, we don't have enough inches.

[04:24]

He said, what do you mean we don't have enough inches? We've got wood, haven't we? We've got metal, we've even got tape measures. He said, yeah, but you don't understand the business world. We just haven't got enough inches, just plain inches. We've used too much of them. And that's exactly what happens when we have a depression. Because money is something of the same order of reality, as inches, grams, meters, pounds, or lines of latitude and longitude. It is an abstraction. It is a method of bookkeeping to obviate the cumbersome procedures of barter. But our culture, our civilization, is entirely hung up on the notion that money has an independent reality of its own. And this is a very striking, concrete example of what I mean by that. Of the way we are bamboozled by our thoughts, which are symbols.

[05:32]

And what we can do to become un-bamboozled. Because it's a very serious state of affair. Most of our political squabbles are entirely the result of being bamboozled, I think. And it is to be noted that as time goes on, the matters about which we fight with each other are increasingly abstract. And the wars fought about abstract problems get worse and worse. It would be an extremely sane enterprise, looking at it from an unsentimental point of view, it would be, I say, an extremely sane enterprise to send the American forces to Vietnam to capture all the beautiful girls who lived there and bring them back. That would, of course, be considered unworthy and base and all that sort of thing. But it would have the advantage of leaving the country intact.

[06:37]

Because we wouldn't want to kill the beautiful girls, because we wanted to capture them. And therefore we would wage a more merciful war than we are waging in the name of abstract principles. So, we are thinking about vast abstractions, ideologies called communism, capitalism, all these systems. And paying less and less attention to the world of physical reality, to the world of earth and trees and water, people. And so are, in the name of all sorts of abstractions, busy destroying our natural environment. Wildlife, for example, is having a terrible problem, continuing to exist alongside human beings.

[07:38]

Another example of this fantastic confusion is that not so long ago, just a few months ago, the Congress voted a law imposing stern penalties upon anyone who should presume to burn the American flag. And they put this law through a great deal of patriotic oratory and quoting of poems and so on about old glory, ignoring the fact entirely that these same congressmen, by acts of commission or omission, are burning up that for which the flag stands. They are allowing the utter pollution of our waters, of our atmosphere, of the devastation of our forests, and the increasing power of the bulldozer to bring about a ghastly fulfillment of the biblical prophecy that every valley shall be exalted, every mountain laid low, and the rough places plain. But you see, they don't see, they don't notice the difference between the flag and the country.

[08:43]

Or as Paul Gimsby pointed out, the difference between the map and the territory. Compare a physical globe and a political globe. The physical globe is a pretty thing with all kinds of green and brown wiggly patterns on it. The political globe, on the other hand, has still got the wiggly outlines of the land, but they are all crossed over with colored patches, many of which have completely strayed edges. A lot of the boundary between the United States and Canada, once you get west of the Great Lakes, is simply a straight line. What has that got to do with anything? With any difference between Canadians on one side of the line, or Americans on the other side of the line, or what have you? It is absolutely a violation of the surface of the territory. And look at the fair city of San Francisco.

[09:44]

It's a lovely place, but they planted on the hills of San Francisco a city pattern that was appropriate to the plains of Kansas. A gridiron. And so you get streets that go straight up, and that are extremely dangerous, where they should have followed the contours of the hills. This is a perfect example of confusion of math as territory, of abstraction with physical reality. Now, however, I think we should begin by talking a little bit about, when we use the word physical reality as distinct from abstraction, what are we talking about? Because you see, there's going to be a fight about this, philosophically. If I say that the final reality that we're living in is the physical world,

[10:51]

a lot of people will say that I'm a materialist, that I'm unspiritual, and that I think too much of an identification of the man with the body. Any book that you open on yoga or Hindu philosophy will have in it a declaration that you start a meditation practice by saying to yourself, I am not the body. I am not my feelings. I am not my thoughts. I am the witness who watches over me. And it's not really any of it. And so, if I were to say then that the physical world is the basic reality, I would seem to be contradicting what is said in these Hindu texts. But it all depends on what you mean by the physical world. What is it? First of all, it must be pointed out that the idea of the material world is itself philosophical.

[11:55]

It is in its own way a symbol. And so, if I take up something that is generally agreed to be something in the material world, and I argue that this is material, of course it isn't. Because nobody has ever been able to put their finger on anything material. That is to say, if you buy the word material, you mean some sort of basic stuff out of which the world is made. By, say, analogy with the art of ceramics, pottery. We use clay and we form it into various shapes. And so a lot of people think that the physical world is various forms of matter. And nobody has ever been able to discover any matter. They've been able to discover various forms, yes, various patterns. But no matter.

[13:01]

You can't even think of how you would describe matter in some terms other than form. Because whenever a physicist talks about the nature of the world, he describes a form, he describes a process, which can be put into the shape of a mathematical equation. And so if you say A plus B equals B plus A, everybody knows exactly what you mean. It's a perfectly clear statement. But nobody needs to ask what do you mean by A or what do you mean by B. Or if you say 1 plus 2 equals 3, that's perfectly clear. But you don't need to know 1 what, 2 what, or 3 what. And all our descriptions of the physical world have the nature of these formulae, numbers, they are simply mathematical patterns. Because what we're talking about is pattern. But it's patterns are such a high degree of complexity

[14:08]

that it's very difficult to deal with it by thinking. In science, we really work in two different ends of the spectrum of reality. We can deal with problems in which there are very few variables. Or we can deal with problems in which there are almost infinitely many variables. But in between, we're pretty helpless. In other words, the average person cannot think through a problem involving more than three variables without a pencil in his hand. That's why, for example, it's difficult to learn complex music. Think of an organist who has two keyboards or three keyboards to work with his hands and each hand is doing a different rhythm. Then his feet on the pedal, he can be doing a different rhythm with each foot.

[15:09]

Now that's a difficult thing for people to learn to do, just like to rub your stomach in a circle and pat your head at the same time takes a little skill. Now, most problems with which we deal with everyday life involve far more than three variables. And we're really incapable of thinking about them. Actually, the way we think about most of our problems is simply going through the motions of things. We don't really think about them. We do most of our decision-making by hunch. You can collect data about a decision that you have to make, but the data that you collect has the same sort of relation to the actual processes involved in the decision as a skeleton to a living body.

[16:12]

It's just the bones. And there are all sorts of entirely unpredictable possibilities involved in every decision. And you don't really think about it at all. The truth of the matter is that we are as successful as we are, which is surprising the degree to which we are successful in conducting our everyday practical life, because our brains do the thinking for us in an entirely unconscious way. The brain is far more complex than any computer. The brain is in fact the most complex known object in the universe, because our neurologists don't understand it. They have a very primitive conception of the brain and admit it. And therefore, if we do not understand our own brains,

[17:15]

that simply shows that our brains are a great deal more intelligent than we are. Meaning by we, the thing that we have identified ourselves with. Instead of being sensible and identifying ourselves with our brains, we identify ourselves with a very small operation of the brain, which is the faculty of conscious attention, which is the sort of radar that we have that scans the environment for unusual features. And we think we are that. And we are nothing of the kind. That's just a little trick we do. So, actually, our brain is analyzing all sensory input, all the time. Analyzing all the things you don't notice, don't think about, don't have even names for. And so it is this marvelous complex going on, which is responsible for our being able to adapt ourselves intelligently to the rest of the physical world.

[18:20]

The brain is furthermore an operation of the physical world. But now you see, oh, we get back to this question. Physical world. This is a concept. This is simply an idea. And if you want to ask me to differentiate between the physical and the spiritual, I will not put the spiritual in the same class as the abstract. But most people do. They think that 1 plus 2 equals 3 is a proposition of a more spiritual nature than, say, for example, a tomato. But I think a tomato is a lot more spiritual than 1 plus 2 equals 3. This is where we really get to the point. That's why in Zen Buddhism, when people ask what is the fundamental principle of Buddhism,

[19:22]

you could very well answer, it's a tomato. Because, look how, when you examine the material world, how diatom it is. It really isn't very solid. A tomato doesn't last very long. Nor, for that matter, do the things that we consider most exaggerate of physical reality, such as mountains. The poet says, the hills are shadows, and they flow from form to form, and nothing stands. Because the physical world is diatom. It's like music. When you play music, it simply disappears. There's nothing left. And for that very reason, it is one of the highest and most spiritual of the arts. Because it is the most transient. And so, in a way, you might say that transiency is the mark of spirituality.

[20:33]

A lot of people think the opposite. That the spiritual things are the everlasting things. But you see, the more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless. Nothing is so dead as a diamond. And yet, this imagery, the idea of the most mineral objects being the most permanent, and so they get associated with the spiritual. Jesus Christ is called the Rock of Ages. And even the Buddhists have used the diamond, the Vajra, as an image of the fundamental reality of the universe. But the reason why they used the diamond was not that it was hard, but that it was completely transparent. And therefore, the thought is a symbol of the void, which everything fundamentally is.

[21:37]

Not meaning that there simply is nothing there, but the void means that you cannot get any idea which will sufficiently define physical reality. Every idea will be wrong, and that then, it will be void. So then, the physical world, we can't even find any stuff out of which it's made. We can only recognize each other, and I say, well, I realize that I met you before, and that I see you again. But the thing that I recognize is not anything really, except a consistent pattern. Let's suppose I have a rope, and this rope begins by being manila rope. Then it goes on by being cotton rope.

[22:40]

Then it goes on with being nylon. Then it goes on with being silk. Silk. So I tie a knot in the rope, and I move the knot down along the rope. Now, is it as it moves along the same knot, or a different knot? We would say it was the same, because he recognized the pattern of the knot. But at one point it's manila, at another point it's cotton, at another point it's nylon, and another it's silk. And that's just like us. We are recognized by the fact that one day you face the same way as you did the day before. And people recognize your facing. So they say, that's John Doe or Mary Smith. But actually the contents of your face, whatever they may be, the water, the carbons, the chemicals, are changing all the time.

[23:45]

You are like a whirlpool in a stream. The stream is doing this consistent whirlpooling, and we always recognize, like at the Niagara, there's a whirlpool. It's one of the sites. But, the water is always moving on. And we are just like that, and everything is like that. So there's nothing in the physical world that is what you might call substantial. It's pattern. And this is why it's so spiritual. To be non-spiritual is not to see that. In other words, it is to impose upon the physical world the idea of thingness, of substantiality. That is to be, in the sense that the Hindus use it, that is to be involved in matter. To identify with the body. To believe, in other words, that the body is something constant.

[24:52]

Something tangible. The body is really very intangible. You cannot sit down and fall falling apart for the moment. And we are aging, getting older, and so therefore if you cling to the body, you will be frustrated. So the whole point is that the material world, the world of nature, is marvellous. So long as you don't try to lean on it. So long as you don't cling to it. And if you don't cling to it, you can have a wonderful time. Let's take, for example, a very controversial issue. All spiritual people are generally against lovemaking. Ramakrishna used to speak about the evils of woman and gold. I have already demonstrated the evils of gold.

[25:55]

But what about the evils of woman? In my point of view, yes, women can be a sort of evil, if you attempt to possess them. I mean, if you could say to another person, I love you so much, I want to own you, and really tie you down, and call you... Well, it's like that poem of Ogden Nash, where someone claimed that he loved his wife so much that he climbed a mountain and named it after her. Called it Mount Mrs. Oswald again. And so, in other words, if you try to possess people, and you make your sexual passion possessive, in that way, then, of course, you are trying to cling to the physical world.

[27:04]

But, you see, women are, in a way, much more interesting if you don't cling to them. If you let them be themselves, and be free. And, in my opinion, you can have a very spiritual sex life, if you are not possessive. If, on the other hand, you are possessive, then you are in trouble. But, you know, the average Swami wouldn't agree with that. Because he confuses, but he, by thinking that the body, the body that I touch is something evil, he's hung up with it. It's like the story of the two dead monks who were crossing a river. And, the fog was very deep because of the flood. And there was a girl trying to get across. And one of the monks immediately picked her up, threw her over his shoulder and carried her across.

[28:08]

Threw her down on the other side, and then the monk went some way, she wouldn't bother. And the other monk was in a kind of embarrassed silence. But he finally broke, and he said, Do you realize that you broke the monastic rule by touching and picking up a woman like that? And he said, Oh, but I left her on the other side of the river, and you're still carrying her. The whole question, then, is, even you can find this to some extent in some rather irritable saint, Paul, where he speaks of the opposition of the flesh and the spirit. Now, this word sarx, in Greek, the flesh, as he uses it, is a really, as Vijaya points out, it's a spiritual category.

[29:11]

Um, for the Christian, you see, the word is made flesh, in Christ. And there will be the resurrection of the body in the final consummation of the universe. So, you cannot really, as an orthodox Christian, take an antagonistic attitude to the flesh. Why then does St. Paul take an antagonistic attitude to the flesh? Well, you can only save the situation and make the New Testament consistent with itself by saying that he meant by the flesh a certain kind of spiritual category. He didn't mean this. Because this isn't flesh. Flesh is a concept. This is not. And so, the flesh, or you might say, talk about the sins of the flesh, they have entirely to do with certain hang-ups

[30:16]

that we have about our, our bodies. And that, again, is what I would call leaning on the world. Exploiting it. When you take, as a Buddhist, you take the third precept, kami sumi ca cara veram anisita padam samadhiyam. And it's usually translated, I undertake the precept to refrain from adultery. It doesn't say anything of the kind. Karma is passion. Kami sumi ca cara, therefore, is, I undertake the precept not to exploit the passions. So, in other words, you may be bored, see, and you're feeling sort of empty and at a loose end, and you think, well, I don't know, let's go commit adultery. If, in a perfectly spontaneous and natural way, you fell in love with some woman,

[31:22]

you wouldn't be going out of your way to get in trouble. It would be appropriate and natural at the time. Or, in the same way, a lot of people, instead of saying, let's commit adultery, when they feel sort of bored, they say, let's go and eat something. And so they become fatter and fatter and fatter, because they're filling the spiritual vacuum in their psyche with food, which doesn't do the job. It is not the function of food to fill the spiritual vacuum. So, in this way, one exploits the appetites, or the passions. And so, likewise, also, the fifth precept, Suram Eriya Madhya Pramadhana, is the list of intoxicating substances. And it doesn't say that you are not going to take them. It says you're not going to be intoxicated by them. In other words, a Buddhist may drink, but not get drunk.

[32:27]

Ah. I don't know how that applies to psychedelics, but that's another story. So, one might say, then, that we are confused, through and through, about what we mean by the material world. And what I'm, first of all, doing is I'm just giving a number of illustrations which show how confused we are. And let me repeat this to get it clear, because it is rather complicated. In the first place, we confuse abstract symbols, that is to say, numbers and words and formulae, with physical events, as we confuse money with consumable wealth.

[33:31]

In the second place, we confuse physical events, the whole class and category of physical events, with matter. But matter, you see, is an idea, it's a concept. It's a concept of stuff, of something solid and permanent, that you can catch hold of. And you just can't catch hold of the physical world. The physical world is the most evasive, elusive process that there is. It will not be pinned down, and therefore it fulfills all the requirements of spirit. So what I'm saying, then, is that the non-abstract world, which is called unspeakable, which is only a lot of words, is the spiritual world. And the spiritual world isn't something kind of ghastly, abstract,

[34:35]

formless. In that sense, it's shapeless. It's formless in another sense. The formless world is the wiggly world. Wiggly. See, when we say something is shapeless, like a cloud, what shape has this cloud? You say, well, it's so vague, it's shapeless. That's the real formless world. The formal world is the one that human beings try to construct all the time. See, wherever human beings have been around, you see rectangles and straight lines, because we always try to straighten things out. And so that's the very mark of our presence. I don't know why we do it, but it's always been a problem to me why it's... Why architects are always using rectangles.

[35:39]

But the thing is, they make us feel very uncomfortable if they don't. I have an architect friend who built somebody a house like a snail shell. And it spiraled in and in and in and in, and the john was right at the center. It was a... But everybody rebels against this house. They just... They feel very uncomfortable. No, no, the furniture doesn't fit. Because all furniture is made to fit in a rectilinear theme. And we're always putting things in boxes. See, all thoughts, all words are labels on boxes. Therefore we feel we've got to get everything boxed. And so we put ourselves in boxes. Everything is put in boxes. But actually everything else in nature, it doesn't go that way. As, for example, the snail doesn't put itself in a box. The crab doesn't put itself in a box.

[36:45]

It has these fascinating, gorgeous objects. What is, for example, more beautiful than a conch shell? Or a lovely scallop shell? These are gorgeous things. We could make the most delicious shells out of concrete. Or plastics. They could be very beautiful. And we could distribute ourselves over the landscape like shellfish along the seashore. But instead we have to live in boxes. There's nothing you can't fight it. It's a system. So, you know, then you have to, you begin to build your furniture and chairs, everything accordingly, with its shapes, because they're easy to store away in a place that is a box in the first place. But you see, then that is this rectilinear world.

[37:48]

This is unspiritual. This is the world of what we all call the artificial, as distinct from the natural. And when we live in a world like that, we begin to have ourselves bamboozled by it. You think, you begin to think that reality is this sort of straightened out situation that we all have to live in. And you don't remember that reality is precisely the wiggly world. You see? We don't realize that we are all wiggly. The problem is that we wiggle in rather the same way. We have head, two arms, two legs, etc. But notice how we do all sorts of things to ourselves to

[38:51]

sort of evade our wiggliness. The way we dress, especially men. Women are allowed to be a little bit more curvaceous and wiggly than men are. It's somewhat appreciated. But men go around in these square-cut suits and straight pants. They're really... These clothes that we wear in the West are originally military uniforms. Did you know that? That's why they have buttons on the sleeve. Because they used to have buttons all the way up the sleeve so people wouldn't wipe their noses on their sleeve. They were livery, in other words. And this uniform is being adopted all over the world. I was in Ceylon in November and the moment I got to Ceylon I saw that men were going around in sarongs

[39:55]

with long white shirts over them. So I bought such an outfit. It was terribly hot and therefore this kind of clothing was extremely comfortable. They wear a sort of a stole, usually yellow or orange, which has a little scarf with a fringe around your neck. And it's a moat. Easy, wonderful dance, a moat in London. So I was invited to speak at the University of Ceylon, kindly. And I found when I got there, I found it was a very tense atmosphere. The dance was a great degree of anti-American feeling. Because we cut off AIDS and they don't approve of our behavior in Vietnam and all that kind of thing. So I was an American speaker and when I appeared, they started bullying. But I was wearing Sino-Levi's clothes. And I got up and said,

[40:57]

I had an interpreter who was a very bright psychology graduate student. And I got up and said, ladies and gentlemen, and the gentlemen incidentally were all wearing white shirts and pants. And I got up and said, ladies and gentlemen, I purposely put on tonight your national dress. The first reason is practical. You have developed this over many hundreds of years with the right kind of clothes to wear in this climate. And I find it very suitable. The second is, it is properly adapted to male anatomy. And there was a big laugh at this. And the interpreter whispered to me, he said, you meant it that way, didn't you? But you know, that broke the ice. There was no further trouble. But you see, there's a curious paradox about this.

[42:01]

That that kind of clothing follows the wigglyness of things and doesn't contradict it. But what is the paradox of it? That both these Sinhalese clothes and Japanese clothes and Indonesian clothes don't attempt to violate the nature of cloth. And they are more rectangular than our clothes. But they don't look that way when you put them on. You can take a kimono and fold it and pack it away. And when you unpack, you don't have to have it present. The Sinhalese Minister of Education's wife was talking to us about saris. She said, I've got these saris, I can pack 20 saris into a small suitcase. When I travel, I can wear three a day.

[43:02]

There's nothing but an enormous piece of woven material. Rectilinear. But they feel, you see, that since it is the nature of cloth to be woven this way and to be rectilinear, you shouldn't violate the nature of cloth when you make clothes. And so we with all these fitted clothes that we have, with this extraordinary shoulder work and so on, they are impossible to pack. Every time you travel with a business suit, you have to get it pressed if you want to look decent. And that's true of many women's clothes too. But by following the nature of cloth and not violating it, the cloth then will follow the nature of your body. And it will gracefully adapt to it and hang in just the right way. And by, as it were, respecting the physical world, in either case it all goes together. But this world, this physical world,

[44:09]

is wiggly. And this is the most important thing to realize about it. As I've sometimes said, we're living in the middle of a Rorschach plot. And there really is no way that the physical world is. In other words, the nature of truth, I said in the beginning, somebody had said that thoughts were made to conceal truth. This is the fact. Because there is no such thing as the truth that can be stated. In other words, ask the question, what is the true position of the stars in the Big Dipper? Well, it depends where you're looking at them from. And there is no absolute position. So, in the same way, accountants, a good accountant will tell you that any balance sheet is simply a matter of opinion. There's no such thing as a true state of affairs,

[45:14]

of a business. But we're all hooked on the idea that there is, you see, an external, objective world, which is a certain way. And that it really is that way. History, for example, is a matter of opinion. History is an art, not a science. It's something constructive, which is accepted as a more or less satisfactory explanation of events, which is, as a matter of fact, don't have an explanation at all. Most of what happens in history is completely irrational. The people always have to feel that they've got to find a meaning. For example, you get sick. And you've lived a very good life. And you've been helpful to other people, and done all sorts of nice things. And you get cancer. And you say to the clergyman, why did this have to happen to me? And you're looking for an explanation, and there isn't one. It just happened that way.

[46:17]

But people feel that they can't find an explanation. They feel very, very insecure. Why? Because they haven't been able to straighten things out. The world is not that way. So the truth, in other words, what is going on, is, of course, a lot of wiggles. But the way it is is always in relation to the way you are. In other words, however hard I hit a skinless drum, it will make no noise. Because noise is a relationship between a fist and a skin. So in exactly the same way, light is a relationship between electrical energy and eyeballs. It is you, in other words, who evoke the world and you evoke the world in accordance with

[47:21]

what kind of a you you are. What kind of an organism. One organism evokes one world. Another organism evokes another world. And so everything, reality, is a kind of relationship. You've been listening to Alan Watts with part one from a seminar entitled Veil of Thoughts. How much does the United States help the Soviet Union establish its first industrial centers? You know, the Trump building, and the automobile industry, and certain other branches of goods that are by work for the American way of life. Let me ask, Don Carlson, are you online? Yes, I am, Joe. Don, as a business... As well. As a businessman in California, what are your perceptions and your hopes about the possibility for vast accelerations in East-West trade? Well, I have an enormous interest in this,

[48:22]

not so much as a... in terms of our business, Joe, but as a way of reducing the tension between ourselves and the Soviets. This and a whole host of other activities, including the types of diplomacy that we're all participating in tonight, I think are the hopes of the future. I'm very, very optimistic. I understand you're planning a trip... I'm planning on bringing a group of business people that go to the Soviet Union this summer. And the purpose of that trip? Well, it would be... it would vary in some cases. It would be actually businessmen and women that would have the possibility of entering into trade agreements with the Soviets. In other cases, we simply broaden perspectives in terms of what the potential might be. Would you like to ask a question of our Russian friends in Moscow? Well, I'm really going to be looking forward to pursuing it personally, Joe. I know there are obstacles to trade, but maybe in a broad sense, with either Joseph or John there, what can we do to expedite the process

[49:23]

to accelerate more meaningful trade between ourselves and the Soviet Union? John, are you there? Yes. Can you have someone there comment on the possibility of rapid increases in business relationships between our two cultures? Economic relations. I don't know. You see, this is an interesting question. But what I can say as a kind of a denominator is that you should always refer back to what Lenin used to say, that politics and foreign trade should never be mixed. And, you know, the Soviet Union is always trying to get good economic relations going with all countries as long as it's done in an equitable and businesslike manner. They feel that everyone has to gain by this. They've never tried to use economics and trade as a political weapon. Now, let's see.

[50:25]

Dan Perry, who is sitting here in Los Angeles. Dan, would you like to ask a question of our friends in Moscow? Well, I would in connection to the human side of U.S.-USSR relationships. I'm a firm proponent of that heart-to-heart connection that has to happen. If it happens through the communications technology or through economic negotiation, the main reason we're doing it is to create that person-to-person heart-to-heart contact. I'm going to be taking 40 kids and adults to the Soviet Union in about two and a half weeks. And we're doing it so we make those heart connections. So I want to ask Joseph and John and all those people, how are our kids going to be received by your kids in the Soviet Union? Did you hear the question? Yes, I did hear it. Now, regarding the question about the kids are going to be received in a wonderful way, I'm going to try to speak in a bit of a different language. We have experienced

[51:28]

during the last Moscow Film Festival in 1983, hundreds of flooded kids were sharing their visions and their interests in film together with American kids collected together in the University of California. Later on, one hour, a new TV program was shown to the millions of kids and the practical received hundreds of thousands of letters from all of that. And we remember the last birth of an American 12-year-old guy who said to the audience that it was the happiest day of his life. So we understood from this that if we give a chance to kids from our two countries to share, to be together, it will be the happiest day of their lives. So this is the simple answer I can give to you right now. Thank you, Joseph. And now Chuck Alton. Okay, we're going to take a 10-second break for the stations to identify themselves. And then we have a special report from Sharon Leeds

[52:30]

on a very special meeting of veterans from both the United States and the Soviet Union coming up. And then we'll come back to the third Global Town Meeting and we'll talk about projects in progress and projects in the future. You're listening to the third Global Town Meeting on the U.S. radio network. And we're carrying the Global Meeting on FM 91.7 KALW in San Francisco. A community service of the San Francisco Unified School District. It was on April 25, 1945 on the Elbe River in Germany that Russian and American soldiers embraced as comrades in arms and partners in victory against Nazi Germany. It was this unification of Russians and Americans that ensured the defeat of Hitler and the end of the war.

[53:31]

To commemorate this event and to promote peace and international goodwill, the 40th anniversary Journey for Peace will send a contingent of U.S. citizens led by American World War II veterans to Torgau, Germany to meet a contingent of Russian citizens led by Soviet World War II veterans. The American delegation will gather in Washington, D.C. on April 20th to return to historic places of the war in Europe and travel in the spirit of reconciliation from Amsterdam to Moscow. This project has been endorsed by a variety of prominent Americans from Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole to Senator Paul Simon. World-renowned author Studs Terkel applauds the reunion. The 40th anniversary journey is a pilgrimage for sanity as well as for peace. It recognizes that those we call our enemy quote-unquote were once our staunch allies

[54:34]

in the great conflage known as World War II. It is a reminder that that which separates us is far, far less important than our common humanity in this ever-diminishing global village we call the Earth. And so I join you in a great deal of delight in celebrating this particular anniversary. Veteran John Booth in Bristol, England. When you think that 40 years ago these people met on the banks of the River Elm they found the bloodiest war this world has ever seen. It was the greatest chance for peace the world has ever had to that meeting. And then again some Russians looked at one another face-to-face on that day and there was a realization that Russians were human beings. The Russians realized that Americans were human beings. It was the greatest chance

[55:34]

for peace this world ever had to the meeting of ordinary men and the banks of the River Elm on that day. In Bremen, West Germany Lutheran Minister Hans Sander urges us all to see the significance of this timely commemoration. I would like to tell you that we in West Germany we the Peace Movement are supporting the meeting at the Elm the 40th anniversary journey for peace. We think it's very good to know that the biggest countries of the world, the Soviet Union and the U.S.R. are working together for peace. And we think peace is only possible if they come together like in Geneva now or if the U.S.R. should come together in Togo. I had the opportunity some years ago to go to the Soviet Union and I found out that the people there they want to have peace and I had the opportunity

[56:35]

to go to the U.S.A. and I found out that the people there too want to have peace. So I think it's very necessary to come together to work for peace and a sense of reconciliation. Above all, the journey for peace recognizes that in spite of very real differences between our two systems there are areas in which the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. can cooperate effectively in securing a just and lasting peace. To find out how you can join the journey for peace you can call this toll free number right now. 800-255-3000 That's 800-255-3000 To send information about upcoming events write to the Global Community Calendar Box 1899 Burbank, California 91507 I'm Sharon Leeds for the U.S. Radio Network. And this is Chuck Alton in Los Angeles

[57:37]

and you're listening to a live conference between Soviet and American citizens called by those citizens on the eve of the very important arms talks in Geneva. In the coming moments we will be talking about cooperative ventures of all different kinds between the people of the two countries and we're very honored to have in our studio Mr. Ted Turner from WTBS and the CNN News Network Damon Perry, a conflict resolutionist who has been working with the people at the laundromat level in the Soviet Union dealing with people at all levels of society. The number of people on our conference call and people waiting to talk to you in the Soviet Union. The number you can call here to ask your questions and make your comments about this broadcast about this meeting about the future of relations between the two countries is area code 213-744-1717 It's area code 213-744-1717 Operators are on duty right now

[58:39]

and back to our moderator Joel Schatz. Thank you, Chuck. It's always good to report good news and we'll take just a few minutes to do that after which we'll return live to the Soviet Union. There are a number of projects underway right now intended to normalize people-to-people relations between both cultures. Don Carlson, are you online? Yes, I am, Joel. Don, can you explain briefly the conception of your book and the shape that it's taking with Soviet participation? Well, the book is part of a really large effort that goes utilizing a whole variety of images, articles, usable images, just a whole variety of things. What I'm trying to summarize in a nutshell is basically a very positive vision consisting of a variety of people's participation including a number of the finest writers and makers from the Soviet Union, people from far country ranging from Norman Cousins, Richard Cockrell, Norman Ferguson, Leonard Bernstein, Eleanor Roosevelt,

[59:40]

and a whole host of others. Much of the work has been published but a lot of it hasn't been. And the net result of all this we hope will be putting into people's hands a type of, a vehicle that will be not only exciting but meaningful and relevant wherever they might open the book up. Something would pop out that would aid this venture that we're all involved with in trying to reduce world tensions. And Don, we do have confirmation that we have about a dozen contributions coming from the Soviet Union this week for that book. Well, that's wonderful, Bill. The probable name will be something you'll either be given as a piece or piece track. We're trying out five or six different names now on a survey. We'll probably have a final name picked out within the next five, six days. Thank you, Don.

[60:41]

Greg Hill, are you online? Is Greg Hill on the conference call? Ron Mann? There's a project having to do with the jazz exchange. Chuck, would you like to explain that? Well, we're working with a gentleman by the name of Tom Evert out of San Francisco who just recently married and brought himself back a wife from the Soviet Union. And Tom, or Ted, is a jazz aficionado and we're working on developing a project where there will be a joint exchange of jazz musicians between the United States and the Soviet Union. And on our April 14th Global Town Meeting, the fourth Global Town Meeting, we have set aside about 20 minutes of the program where there will actually be a live stereo uplink from the Soviet Union. And the group there has yet to be announced. But the group here

[61:42]

that has agreed to be a part of this exchange on April 14th is Weather Report, a very famous and well-known and great group here in the United States. So we're looking forward to that portion of our Global Town Meeting. And I think Carol Rosin is on the conference call and she has news about other events which will take place on April 14th. Are you there, Carol? Yes, I am. I'm really looking forward to the participation of Soviet scientists from the Academy of Sciences who will be talking about cooperative ventures in space and about, we'll be talking in the United States

[62:21]

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